Game Review

Just Sing! National Anthems Review

How many national anthems can you sing? We're guessing you can comfortably sing your own country's anthem most of the way through, but you would probably struggle with any other country's. That's why the premise of Just Sing! National Anthems is so puzzling: a collection of five European anthems, you're unlikely to be able to – or even want to – sing any other country's patriotic poem.

Taking in songs from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, you sing along and score points for hitting the right notes and, apparently, singing the correct words. If you've played any singing game released since Sony's SingStar you'll know exactly what to expect: bars represent the length and pitch of notes and the words bob along karaoke-style.

The pitch detection works surprisingly well: it's not perfect all the time, but the included microphone calibration tends to iron out most issues that arise. It's not the kind of game you're likely to play on the bus so don't even try, but if you're in a quiet corner the voice response works well and you can even hum or whistle along if you can't quite grasp a foreign tongue.

Given the upcoming World Cup this title has gone for a football festival theme, with your on-screen avatar belting out the anthem in front of a golden cup in a stadium. The animation isn't going to set the world on fire but it's functional and to be honest you're more likely to be concentrating on the lyrics and melody anyway.

Editor's note: The version available in North America contains five different anthems, namely Argentina, Brazil, United States of America, Japan and Australia, but is otherwise identical.

Conclusion

Just Sing! National Anthems is an inoffensive, and most importantly cheap, collection of national anthems that may come in handy for some practice before the World Cup. The voice detection works most of the time and the score element adds a smidgen of repeat play, but unless you're multi-lingual and genuinely want to sing other country's national anthems in their original language you'll probably want to avoid this one.

Well I like to sing, and I like to feel smart by knowing bits of other languages, and the ability to sing 5 foreign national anthems will certainly make me a hit at parties. This seriously better come to America!